1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a sausage casing apparatus. In particular, the present invention relates to an apparatus for the counting, collection and transportation of sausage casings which are supplied to the apparatus by an ejector on a tying-off machine.
2. Description of Related Art
An apparatus of the type described above is known from a commercially available synthetic-casing tying-off machine of Messrs. VEB Kombinat Nagema, Dresden. It essentially comprises a delivery chain which rotates in an endlessly closed manner around two rollers, one of which drives or actuates the delivery chain. The apparatus works in that a tied-off sausage casing coming from the machine is pushed by an ejector onto the delivery chain. After a permanently set number of five ejection operations, the delivery chain starts up and transports the accumulated five sausage casings over a specific distance at a constant, invariable speed. The conveyor chain then stops until the next five sausage casings have accumulated.
The sausage casings are removed from the delivery chain by the operating personnel, checked for damage, if necessary bundled into larger units, and delivered for further processing.
A disadvantage of an apparatus of this type is that the working speed of the tying-off machine cannot be increased, without operating or processing errors occurring on the delivery chain, since the mode of operation of the latter cannot be adjusted to match the working speed of the tying-off machine. In other words, the delivery chain can transport only a permanently set number of sausage casings per unit time.